App Thursday: Tap & Track Calorie Tracker

Tap & Track is a favorite in the iTunes App Store, with close to 20,000 four-star rat­ings. Tap & Track doesn’t require Inter­net access, mak­ing it easy to track food at any time. The app’s data­base con­sists of more than 400,000 food items from more than 2,000 food brands and more than 700 restau­rants. Tap & Tracks also fea­tures more than 180 exer­cises, includ­ing house­hold chores like dust­ing. In addi­tion to view­ing daily infor­ma­tion on calo­ries, fat, sat­u­rated fat, pro­tein, carbs, sug­ars, sodium, and fiber, users can actu­ally set their own bud­gets for carbs and fats. The app also allows numer­ous pro­files, so more than one user can track their food and fit­ness using the app. Users can export nutri­tion data to an email account and open it in an Excel spreadsheet.

Descrip­tion
Tap & Track imple­ments Apple’s phi­los­o­phy of sim­plic­ity, but at the same time offers hun­dreds of amaz­ing fea­tures that you’ll love to use every day. The app never requires inter­net access, so you can keep track any­time, anywhere!

• Over 400,000 food items
• Over 2000 food brands
• Over 700 restaurants
• Over 180 dif­fer­ent exercises
• Daily info on calo­ries, fat, sat­u­rated fat, pro­tein, carbs, sug­ars, sodium & fiber
• Track calo­ries and Food Score
• 40:30:30 Pie Charts Reports
• Dis­play­ing your daily calo­rie needs/limits
• Full screen graphs
• Exer­cise tracking
• BMI cal­cu­la­tor
• Weight track­ing
• Sync between iPhone, iPad and web!

Cost
$4.99

Com­pat­i­bil­ity
iPhone
iPad

Learn more →

Recipe of the Week: Roasted Broccoli and Cauliflower

From Rodale

If child­hood mem­o­ries of smelly boiled broc­coli have kept you from enjoy­ing cru­cif­er­ous veg­eta­bles, this cook­ing method may very well change your mind. Bak­ing lightly oiled broc­coli and cau­li­flower until crisp-tender inhibits the release of any unpleas­ant sul­phur aro­mas. Tossed with sweet cit­rus just before serv­ing, the veg­etable mel­lows even more.

Ingre­di­ents

• 4 cups broc­coli florets
• 4 cups cau­li­flower florets
• 5 tea­spoons extra vir­gin olive oil
• 1/2 tea­spoon salt
• 1/8 tea­spoon ground black pepper
• 1 tea­spoon grated lemon peel
• 1 tea­spoon grated orange peel

Direc­tions

1. Pre­heat the oven to 450°F. Coat a large bak­ing sheet with cook­ing spray.
2. Com­bine the broc­coli and cau­li­flower in a large bowl. Toss with the oil, salt, and pep­per. Spread over the pre­pared bak­ing sheet and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, until crisp-tender and slightly browned, 20 to 22 min­utes. Return to the bowl and toss with the lemon and orange peels.

Nutri­tional Facts
per serv­ing

CALORIES 98.3 CAL
FAT 6.2 G
SATURATED FAT 0.9 G
CHOLESTEROL 0 MG
SODIUM 339.9 MG
CARBOHYDRATES 9.3 G
TOTAL SUGARS 2.4 G
DIETARY FIBER 4.7 G
PROTEIN 4.1 G

Eat This, Not That: Wake Up and Go

Thank you to all the friends that joined us today. We had a huge turnout, which is good news for our push-up challenge!

We hope that all of our new friends enjoyed the work­out as much as we always do. When you have a moment, sign up and join us for a full month. In the mean­time, enjoy this arti­cle about the best way to start your day…

Here’s the 6th and last install­ment of the six research-backed quick cures wait­ing for you in the fresh pro­duce bins and super­mar­ket shelves.

When You Need to Wake Up and Go…

Eat This:
Eggs and Whole-Wheat Toast

Eggs are a great source of pro­tein, and hav­ing them for break­fast sets you up for a per­fect day of eat­ing. Saint Louis Uni­ver­sity researchers found that peo­ple who eat eggs for break­fast con­sume 264 fewer calo­ries the rest of the day than those who eat bagels and cream cheese.

Not That!
Bagel and Cream Cheese

At 500 calo­ries and 20 grams of fat, this deli dis­as­ter is one of the worst ways to start your day. Sixty grams of fast-burning car­bo­hy­drates will cause a dip in energy and a spike in hunger, long before lunchtime. The same goes for crois­sants, dan­ish, donuts, and pancakes.

The Amazing Power of Avocados

From Health​.com

Love avo­ca­dos?

Well you’ll love them even more when you dis­cover their amaz­ing ben­e­fits: they keep you thin, pro­tect your vision, and may even pre­vent cancer.

Eye opener
Pro­tect your vision with a few slices of avo­cado at lunch or din­ner. Avo­ca­dos are rich in lutein and zeax­an­thin, antiox­i­dants found in the retina that keep eyes healthy; they also may help pre­vent age-related prob­lems, like cataracts and mac­u­lar degeneration.

Can­cer fighter
Extracts from avo­ca­dos kill or stop the growth of pre­can­cer­ous cells that lead to oral can­cer and may have a sim­i­lar effect on other can­cers, accord­ing to a recent study. Researchers credit the fruit’s unique combo of nutrients—which include folate and vit­a­mins C and E.

Nutri­ent booster
Add avo­cado to salsa for a big­ger health pay­off. A study from The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity found that peo­ple absorbed four-and-a-half times more of the cancer-fighter lycopene from the toma­toes when avo­cado was added; the healthy fats help you absorb more nutrients.

Health­ier fat
Skip the mayo, and go for creamy avo­cado on your sand­wich. It packs 4 grams of heart-healthy monoun­sat­u­rated fat (which low­ers cho­les­terol), 2 grams of fiber, and 1 gram of pro­tein per ounce, mak­ing it a lower-fat, more-filling sub­sti­tute for the white stuff.

What are your favorite ways to enjoy an avocado?

Log and Blog

Con­grat­u­la­tions! You’ve com­pleted Day 1 of March boot camp. Only 15 (or 25 depend­ing how you’re count­ing) days to go…

Make the most of this month by fol­low­ing two sim­ple rules:
Log and Blog!

Log: You’ve prob­a­bly heard it hun­dreds of times: write your goals down. But do you know why this step is so impor­tant? When you put pen to paper, you turn your thoughts into some­thing tan­gi­ble. That’s why we strongly encour­age you to track your diet and fit­ness goals by writ­ing them down. You will quickly see how the act of writ­ing these things down helps keep you moti­vated. Here’s a handy PDF that you can print to track your meals, goals and progress (print page 11 to track your meals)…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Blog: Have you ever heard that work­ing out in a group is one of the best ways to stay moti­vated? It’s true! Hav­ing peo­ple there along­side you to share in your expe­ri­ence and encour­age you along the way is often­times the dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful exer­cise plan and one that tends to fiz­zle out over time. Share in your chal­lenges and your suc­cesses with your fel­low BC4Cers, and be sup­port­ive of their efforts as well by check­ing this blog after every workout.

You can also stay in touch with your fel­low BC4Cers via our Face­book page. Go ahead… go there and Like us today!

Read on to learn more about track­ing your meals…

We at BC4C would like you all to take a few moments and con­sider where and how you are get­ting the food you eat today.

• Do you plan to grab break­fast while hang­ing out your car window?
• Do you plan on grab­bing a hand­ful of M&M’s from your co-worker’s desk and call it a mid-morning snack?
• Do you plan to stand in line for lunch and order the fastest item that can be prepared?
• And do you plan to eat what ever is left on your child’s plate and con­sider your din­ner taken care of?

When we were in school we were forced to do a num­ber of sim­ple cal­cu­la­tions in order for us to add and sub­tract like sec­ond nature; the same prin­ci­pal applies for our nutri­tion journals.

Log­ging your meals — though tedious like math — will help you devote some time and energy to plan out where and what you eat. We ask you to eat five meals a day — not three meals and two snacks — because each time you eat you should use it as an oppor­tu­nity to get in the nutri­ents you need. The five meals you eat should be the vehi­cles for you to obtain your 9 serv­ings of grains, 4 serv­ings of veg­eta­bles, 3 serv­ings of fruit, 2 serv­ings of dairy, and 5 serv­ings of pro­tein the USDA rec­om­mends we eat every day.

While using a nutri­tion jour­nal, we hope that when you walk out the door every morn­ing, you do so with a plan of how you will get the nutri­ents you need to stay active and healthy — which will even­tu­ally become sec­ond nature.

Remem­ber, print page 11 to track your meals…

Down­load and print log book (PDF)

Tell us how you’re doing on Day 1. Leave a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments” link at the top of this post.